The Detroit Pistons brought Monty Williams in as the team's new head coach to re-instill a winning culture towards a franchise that has been treading water for the past 15 years. Williams, after all, ushered in the turnaround in Phoenix, and with talented youngsters such as Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren, and Ausar Thompson on the roster, they could very well be on an upward trajectory.

Alas, the Pistons' 2023-24 season hasn't gone according to plan. Their Wednesday night loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, a 116-102 defeat, gave them their 18th consecutive loss, and everyone is scrambling for answers as to what Detroit must do to stop the bleeding. Even the return of Bojan Bogdanovic from injury hasn't been enough.

At this point, the Pistons are becoming the league's laughingstock, and deservedly so. Monty Williams is already catching some flak for some of his confounding decisions, and he may not be helping himself and his team by continuing to express his frustrations so candidly in front of reporters.

“We couldn't make a shot. We had wide open 3s. [We didn't have] the personal pride to guard the ball and not let a guy get to the ball,” Williams said postgame, per Mike Curtis of The Detroit News. The Pistons head coach also said that he asked his team how much losing is enough to get them to get their act together, referring to the way they let Grizzlies star Desmond Bane get to the hoop unimpeded on multiple occasions.

No one said that getting the Pistons back on track was going to be an easy task, and Monty Williams surely knew that when he took on the job. But what makes matters more frustrating for fans, beyond the Pistons' disastrous results as of late, has been Williams' perplexing decision-making.

Williams continues to be hard on Jaden Ivey, relegating him to the bench yet again after starting him in recent days, while Ausar Thompson has also borne the brunt of the Pistons head coach's continued tough love towards the team's youngsters.

The Pistons will be facing teams in the top-six of the Eastern Conference in each of their next five games, so it's looking rather possible that their losing streak reaches 23 given how disarray the entire franchise is at the moment.